5 of the Greatest PoE Delve Builds for 3.4

We’re a month and a half into the league, and the Delve builds have been fairly well established at this point. With some new skills released and many reworked, the list has a couple of old favorites as well as several newcomers. Without too much preamble, here are our top five PoE Delve Builds.

What are the top PoE Delve Builds?

Blade Vortex Elementalist

Toxic Rain

Elemental Hit

Consecrated Path

Pure Defense Hears of Agony

(5) Pure Defense Herald of Agony

This build was posted on the forums, but I and many others saw it by watching popular streamer Nugiyen. The concept of the build is to use as many defensive options as possible, neglecting much of the offensive options. Then make use of a few minion damage nodes and the new Herald of Agony. Since the minion summoned by Herald of Agony is so strong, if you can keep its stacks high it will easily solo all content. All you have to worry about is staying alive. It plays similar to a spectre build, but far more actively.

Since you have to attack to keep your Herald of Agony stacks high, you make use of a skill that hits quickly. Cyclone seems to be the option most have chosen currently. This works well with the fact that both variants want to use shields for more defensive stats.

The first variant was the one posted on the forums, which is a Gladiator that manages to get their block to 83% for both attacks and spells. They also use a claw for the health and mana return on hit. This variant is fairly budget and can take on all content in the base game.

Nugiyen’s variant is far more expensive, and instead of block, it focuses on raising maximum resistances. I do not suggest it to new players. However, if you have the currency and knowledge, his build makes use of Saffel’s, Divination Distillate, and all three purities, with the flask effectiveness nodes, in order to get a bonus 18% to all elemental resistances. He also uses Lightning Coil plus the shield corruption to convert 38% of phys to lightning, and Taste of Hate for 20% to cold. This means that he takes only 28% of the elemental damage that most people take, and only 64% of the physical damage. All this paired with a Zerphis for massive life regeneration. None of this is easy to achieve, but if you can manage it you’ll be nearly unkillable.

(4) Consecrated Path

Consecrated Path is one of the new offensive skills that was released. It is a skill that shoots you towards a targeted enemy and deals damage in an AoE around them. Sort of like a controlled Flicker Strike. It is incredibly fun to play around with, and – to my great surprise – incredibly efficient. I had expected it to be weak due to the fact that it can make you move so incredibly fast, or be volatile in the way that Flicker Strike will often just get you killed to something by throwing you onto it. However, Consecrated Path doesn’t have either of these problems. It also gets around the worry of overpowering by not moving unless you target a minion, slowing it down considerably.

Mathil has created his own build using Consecrated Path and Voidforge, which you can see the footage. By making use of ElementalistMathil was able to use all the Heralds for damage, and prolif for clear, making the build’s clear extremely strong. The damage of consecrated path is high enough that it still clears bosses extremely quickly, especially with the use of Voidforge or a strong stat stick. The build can easily clear all content, even if it is a bit squishy the way Mathil built it.

(3) Elemental Hit

That’s right, ele hit is still on the menu. Elemental hit making use of the full fire conversion received a hefty 30% overall damage nerf. However, this only brought it from absolutely insane down to extremely strong. There are hundreds of variants for ele hit out there, pick and choose the one you want. I personally am playing ele hit myself, and I am playing my own Slayer variant, based on UberDan’s ascendant variant.

The basic concept is simply to rely on elemental hit’s base damage, build full life and defenses, and make use of Slayer’s overleech. With the increased maximum leech rate nodes on the tree as well as Blood Rage and the leech pantheon, you can get over 80% of your life leech backed per second. Making use of defensive potions and your high life pool, this makes you near unkillable.

(2) Toxic Rain

This is an entirely new build, with a whole new skill. Toxic Rain is a new damage over time ability based entirely on poison damage. It is a bow skill, which means you can very easily use two six links. This is perfect to use both a strong Toxic Rain and a six linked Herald of Agony. Because of the number of projectiles from Toxic Rain, keeping your Herald of Agony near max stacks is incredibly easy.

Because you have multiple damage sources, you can either focus fire a high health mob down or concentrate on attacking occasionally and then running through the map letting your Mirage Archer and Herald of Agony do work. Mirage Archer won’t stack Herald of Agony, but it’s still a great way to clear maps fast. Here’s a build that makes use of both of these new and awesome skills!

(1) Blade Vortex Elementalist

Sadly nothing has changed in regards to Blade Vortex dominating the builds section. It dominated the last couple leagues, and it continues to do so. This is due to several simple facts. It was not nerfed when other skills were. Impulsa remains in the game and works incredibly well with Blade Vortex. And lastly, it’s easy.

The new skills released have created quite stiff competition for Blade Vortex taking the top spot. The reason I decided to leave it here is due to the ease of making the build work. Put on a couple Shaper stat sticks, and Impulsas, and three heralds, and you’re good to go. Due to Impulsa’s large radius with Elementalist’s proliferation, and the inherent overpowered nature of Shaper stat sticks, it’s difficult to create an easy starter build that’s stronger than BV Elementalist. I don’t believe it’s the strongest build in the game, but it’s definitely one of the most popular, and a tried and true successful one.

Conclusion

Being a month into the league we have already seen many successful builds coming out of the Delve league. These are our personal opinion on the top five PoE Delve Builds! They are all very strong, and the league has many others to choose from as well. Go wild and have fun!